As if two beautiful majestic sets weren't enough the Grateful Dead come out and basically take Europe without firing a shot.
Dark Star>Sugar Magnolia>Caution!
Man is this smoking HOT!!!
What we have in the 3rd set is the return with a vengeance of the free-form jamming of the late 1960's sound with the maturity of the band pointing towards a new era of jazzy exploration.
Welcome Keith to the Mix
Phil you are free to sonic boom us at will...
And it is also the last hurrah for PIgpen and he is not going out with a whimper by any means.
Slipping and sliding...
UNTIL DAYLIGHT
SHINES
THRU
MY
WINDOW...
and this is an American band
So hail, hail rock n roll
Johnny B Goode.

Cold Rain and Snow starts us off with a nice psychedelic tone and sets good energy.
Bobby McGee is great, nice tempo, good singing, and teamwork.
Chinatown Shuffle
China>Rider is brimming with energy and Keith adds nice psychedelic tones in with some cascading piano riffs, by the time you get through the first jam you can see the set is in great shape. The segue is fantastic, Jerry puts in a fine performance, and the move into Rider doesn’t lose steam like it sometimes does. A+.
Jack Straw keeps us in the great plains region, also a great version with much energy.
He’s Gone make its debut, with one of the fastest tempos its ever had!
Next Time You See Me
BTW is great.
Casey Jones is textbook.
Mr Charlie a nice one to close out the set.

PITB opens the second set nicely, with the jam staying up tempo, with slight wah on Jerry’s guitar. Things get really awesome around 5 minutes in, getting into X-factor territory.
Sugaree has a great feel/energy to it, something sometimes lacking in this song during this era.
OMSN rocks and rolls.
Hurts Me Too, way too slow for me.
Ramble On picks things back up.
El Paso is another winner.
Big RR brims with energy, short and sweet!
Truckin’ tears the roof off the joint to end the second set! The explosion build up is fired up, and even Pig can be heard rocking. A+.

Dark Star>Sugar Magnolia>Caution>JBG
The third set is composed of the meat sequence. Dark Star eases in with nice Garcia high notes and a majestic Keith. At 7 minutes in they find a creepy rhythm that starts gaining momentum, and plunks them back into the theme to approach the verse. After the verse is croned, the music quickly leaves the theme and ventures into a slow space. At the 15 minute mark the formless jam gathers a bit of momentum through some rapid scales, which Keith then joins in on to nice effect. It takes another turn to the creepy side after 19 minutes in, gathering more steam it gets downright scary. Emerging from the darkness, we come into a pleasant groove shortly after the 24 minute mark which fins a really nice sound in the 28th minute, where you get a sense they are getting ready to leave the Star. When the do, they head into Sugar Magnolia via a cool segue. The Sugar is typical of the age, but as they end it goes straight into a great Caution! High energy Billy is the key here, pushing the energy strongly out to the band. After some particularly sleazy lyrics, there’s a full bore crashdown to end things, orgasmic one might say… in the post-coital bliss, Johnny B. Goode makes a blazing entry ending the set and show with a classic rocker.

Performance Summary
This is a great show that has a lot to offer… specifically in terms of energy and deep jams. One of the best of the tour.

Sound Quality
I listened to the official release, and it’s basically perfect.

in response to the post below it is Pig layin down a few licks on the organ you can watch the China Rider on Youtube excellent show truly grateful for the Archive!

Wow, this song makes me want to blow it right in my pants. Freakin' phenomenal, right from the bobby mcgee. This has got to be my favorite He's Gone, sans bridge and all...
@ little thunder, the good news is a good majority of these songs can be found on Youtube 100% free, thank god for the World Wide Web!!!!
Peace, love, happiness, and LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOD BLESS THE GRATEFUL DEAD.

Classic!! Anyone have a copy of this on DVD and want to help me out? I'd love to get a copy of it and I could download it, but I don't have a DVD burner. Contact me directly at bjdana@comcast.net. Thanks!

AWE SOME

I want it

I keep coming back to this China Rider and it never fails me. Truckin' and China are real stand outs!

This is a great show. China Town shuffle is truly a shuffle. I think the comments about jerry's strat is interesting because it's not really about the guitar so much as the sound he was exploring. From 71 through at early 72 it seamed he was periodically exploring the country technique of making his guitar sound like a pedal steel guitar. I think this makes some of the jambs sound a little tentative as it is defferent from the precise waterfalls of notes he is known for.

In Sugaree I can clearly hear Keith's piano, but it sounds like there is a bit of organ here and there in the song, which leads me to believe Pigpen was playing it. This suprises me as I thought that by 1972 Pigpen was pretty much only singing his few songs and playing a bit of harmonica and percussion. Can anyone tell me for sure?....Otherwise another great europe show

You guys who do not see the magic in this show are oblivious and should not consider yourselves fans of this gorgeous and powerful music.

This show is fantastic. Jerry is ON and so are the boys. I give it a 4 just b/c of sound quality...but it is still a fantastic listen!

I'm gonna have to download this one. I got the video of furthernet about two years ago. It's a blast to watch the boyz jamming. (did you say "louder" sir?)

I want to see it.

What terms do I need to search at EzTorrent to find this alleged footage of the band at Copenhagen????

Of course the best version of Good Lovin' was performed at Tivoli in 1972 (the next day?) -- that point does not need to be debated any further.

You can get it on www.dimeadozen.org, It is utterly wonderful. While I was listening to it, I seriously thought I had passed away and gone to a far happier place - Copenhagen in the Spring, 33 years ago, listening to absolutely prime Grateful Dead!

Jerry's guitar playing "sucks?" What the fuck are you talking about? This was his best, not worst, year for soloing EVER, along with '73 and '74. And while I agree that he could be an inconsistent vocalist, his guitar playing was always good, until the mid-'90s of course. You certainly have a lot of balls to insult this great musician.

As for the show, it's not great since there's no long jams, just a lot of short songs. However, seeing the DVD would be priceless since footage of the Dead pre-October '74 is scarce. But since I don't have the DVD, I can't review the show definitively. Does anyone know of a site that DOES have the DVD of this show, for download or otherwise?

did someone here write that jerrys playing sucked? and that 72 was his worst year? someone tell me hes kidding either that our hes fucking insane,wow id thought id seen all the stupid shit people could come up with on this site but this tops it,the only problem with jerrys playin in 72 is that he didnt solo long enough on the first set standards, hince the reason they play so many songs in the first set of shows 4 star show for quality and overall sound

The stretch from Dark Star to the end of the show from 4/14/72 is widely-circulated, and it's classic Pig for this era. Sort of like Billie Holliday in the 50s. Both flashing brilliance in their twilight. Please oh please!

As usual, another great show from '72.

As for the missing parts, I have heard only a select few have copies of this show in full and were told not to circulate it. A crime for sure.

A

I didn't actually download this show, but I have the video so, I guess I'll review...

The Sound quality is great. The band is great. Jerry's guitar playing sucks, but thats to be expected ('72 was probably his worst year), and continued to suck until he got rid of that Strat. Pigpen is great on Hurts Me Too and Next Time You See Me, but his singing is weak and wails out of tune on Chinatown Shuffle. Great Saturday Night though.

This is some fine music from the Europe 72 Tour. It would be nice to have more of this show in the future. The first of any new song is usually good for your collections too...

Forget the DVD mentioned here. That website got harassed by the RIAA lawyers on 4/6...

The French television broadcast is available as a DVD download at www.easytree.org
Hit the search link and type Grateful Dead DVD, there are a few available. It's about 2.5 gigs and took me around ten hours to get it. The quality is great and definitely worth watching.

This is a hot show! As to the missing tracks: I have no idea what happened to them but it seems everybody on etree has this version that is missing tracks. A review written in one of the old Deadbase books I have talks about how smoking the Caution is, so the music does circulate somewhere

Seems they've gotta be out there somewhere - a lost Dark Star? From '72? Say it ain't so.